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How Strety Uses Strety: Projects for Day-to Day Work

Written by Derek Weaver

Strety Projects give your team one collaborative place to do the actual work behind your Rocks, recurring processes, and one-off initiatives. In this guide, you'll learn how to get started using Strety Projects through examples of actual projects we manage internally at Strety using Strety

Learn more: Strety Projects | Complete Guide

Why we built Projects

During Strety's first year in business, our project work lived everywhere:

  • Customer Success used Monday.com

  • Marketing used Google Tools

  • Engineering used Shortcut

  • Our CEO used Planner

When work crossed teams, it lived in fragments across silo'd tools. The more platforms we spread work across, the more things slipped through the cracks. All that tool switching cost us visibility and slowed delivery.

When we built Projects for ourselves first, but we knew plenty of other teams felt the same pain. Consolidating project work into Strety removes those barriers, allowing you to:

  • Eliminate tool chaos: Run projects in the same place you run your business operating system, instead of yet another platform.

  • Power quarterly goals: Many Rocks are really internal projects. Projects give a Rock its own space for the granular work, without cluttering your Team Space.

  • Bridge strategy and execution: Complex, cross-team initiatives need more structure than a Rock and its Milestones can hold.

  • Work in and on the business in one place: Your day-to-day tasks and your strategic priorities live side by side.

What to use Projects for

Projects are a space to collaborate around larger initiatives. The most common use cases for Projects are to manage:

  • Rocks: The most common use. Give a quarterly priority a dedicated execution space.

  • Large one-off efforts: Events, launches, or change management rollouts

  • Recurring processes: Onboarding, offboarding, campaigns, or rolling out EOS at the department level.

Why Use Projects to Manage Rocks?

Most Rocks are bigger than what a Rock in Strety is designed to hold. In your L10, you only care whether a Rock is on track or off track. If it's off track, you create an Issue. If not, you move on.

The actual work behind the Rock (the To Dos, the Rock-specific meetings, the communication specific to the Rock) belongs somewhere else. That's what a Project is for.

Projects also get around Team Space permissions, which are built around L10 attendance. In a Project, you can:

  • Invite anyone across the company, even if they're not on your leadership or L10 team

  • Assign them To Dos and include them in Rock-related meetings

  • Give them full context on the Rock without access to your Team Space

Tip: Set the Project's status tracking to Weekly Check-Ins That Update a Rock, and the Project's check-in will update the Rock's status automatically. See How to link Projects to Rocks.

Not sure whether you need a Rock, a Project, or both? Read When to Use Strety Projects vs. Rocks.

Tools inside a Project

Project Spaces use many of the same tools as a Team Space, but they're built around organizing To Dos. Here's how each tool fits into day-to-day project work.

To Dos

To Dos are the center of every Project. Three features let you shape them to fit the work:

  • To Do Lists: Group To Dos into columns. Build lists around type (for our Integrator Summit: Logistics, Programming, Swag) or around phase or time (for a Strety rollout: lists in sequential order).

  • Custom To Do Fields: Add your own tags or labels. Use them to show who owns a task, what kind of task it is, or its priority. They're most useful on larger plans with many people involved. See How to Create To Do Custom Fields.

  • Drag and drop: Move To Dos between lists, including Backlog and Done, as work progresses.

Agendas

Run every Project meeting from a Strety Agenda, so the meeting history lives with the Project. For the Integrator Summit, every planning meeting in the lead-up lives in the Project's Agendas.

Messages

Use Messages to keep project communication in context instead of in email or Slack. Two common uses:

  • Introduce the Project: Explain what it is, define key terms, and set expectations for how people should engage.

  • Share updates: Post news and discussion that only matters to the Project's members.

Here's What Worked For Us: The kickoff Message does more than you'd expect. Our Documentation Management Project opens with a Message that defines each list and field, so new members know exactly how to use the Project without a meeting.

Docs

Store files and reference material for the Project, such as the scope, charter, budget, forms, or role descriptions. Our New Hire Onboarding Project keeps every onboarding form and role description here.

Check-Ins

Create custom prompts to gather regular feedback from Project members. In our New Hire Onboarding Project, Check-Ins ask the new hire how their first weeks are going.

Learn more: Docs Complete Guide · Check-Ins Complete Guide · Messages Complete Guide · Custom Agendas Complete Guide

How to kick off a new Project

Set the Project up before you invite anyone. Work through this checklist in order:

  • Choose a structure. Decide how To Dos will move through the Project (see the two options below).

  • Task out the Project. Start with the bare minimum and add more as you go.

  • Add Custom To Do Fields. Use them when the Project has several kinds of tasks or several owners.

  • Hide tools you don't need. Simplify what people see when they open the Project.

  • Add people. Invite members once the Project is ready for the big reveal.

  • Link it to a Rock, if the Project powers one.

  • Connect it to your Team Spaces. Set the primary space, share into additional Team Spaces, and pull it into Agendas for visibility, as needed.

  • Post a kickoff Message. Outline the Project and its goals, define key terms, and set expectations for how people will use it.

Choose a structure

There are two common ways to structure To Do Lists:

Structure

How To Dos move

Best for

Our example

Phase or milestone lanes

Each To Do stays in its list until it's done

Sequential work with clear stages

Strety Rollout, New Hire Onboarding

Status workflow

To Dos move left to right as their status changes

Ongoing work that flows through steps

Documentation Management

Phase or milestone lanes

In the Strety Rollout Project below, each To Do List represents a phase of the rollout, organizing each To Do beneath a key milestone for a successful rollout

Status workflow

In the Documentation Management Project below, each To Do List represents the status of each To Do, organizing each To Do according to how close it is to being completed
​

Use Custom To Do Fields the right way

Match the number of fields to the Project's complexity:

  • Simple, repeatable Projects: One label is enough. Our onboarding template uses a single field for who owns each task, which makes it fast to start from a template.

  • Complex Projects: Use more labels. Our rollout plan uses fields for who, what, and priority

Learn More: Custom To Do Fields

Build Projects faster with AI

Already have a task list in a PDF, spreadsheet, or another tool? Connect the Strety MCP to Claude or ChatGPT, upload your existing task list, and ask it to create a new Project. It handles most of the setup for you.

Turn recurring work into a Project template

For processes you run again and again, like onboarding or rollouts, a template makes the process standard and fast to stand up.

Carries over to the template

Does not carry over

To Do Lists

To Do assignees

To Dos

To Do due dates

To Do descriptions

Messages

To Do checklists

Custom To Do Fields

Check-Ins

Docs

Here's What Worked For Us: Build a real Project first. Add all the To Dos, lists, fields, and Check-Ins, then click the three-dot menu and select Save as Template. This is easier than building a template from scratch in Adminland.

Learn more: How to create a Project template

Project examples: How Strety uses Strety

We run our own work in Projects. Here's how each type is set up and why it works.

New hire onboarding

  • Repeatable: Every new hire starts from the same template.

  • Easy to staff: Invite only the people each new hire needs.

  • Layered: Add To Do List templates for a specific team or seat on top of the general onboarding template.

  • Filterable: Custom To Do Fields let each person filter to their own tasks.

  • Feedback built in: Check-Ins ask the new hire how onboarding is going.

Rolling out Strety or a new process

  • Standardize how every team rolls out a new process or tool, your way.

  • Give the project manager and leadership visibility into rollout progress across teams.

For a full playbook, see Rolling Out EOS & Strety Across the Organization.

One-off events: Integrator Summit

A custom Project for a single large event, which may or may not tie to a Rock

Here's What Worked For Us: Even team members only lightly involved in planning always knew where to find what they needed. Everything about the event lived in one place.

Multiple similar events

One Project represents all the events in a season, and each To Do List represents a single event. This gives everyone visibility across events and makes it easy to collaborate.

Other ways we use Projects

  • Feature releases: Marketing, Engineering, Success, & Support manage all new product releases in one project, allowing each team to manage their unique responsibilities for each new release

  • Cycle Projects: Our Engineering team uses Strety projects to manage the build, iterations, and release of all features, big and small

Track all your Projects with Project Reports

Once your team is running several Projects, use the Projects tab in Reports to see where each one stands and which need attention.

The report shows:

  • Health percentage: Projects on track, based on their latest check-in

  • Updated this week: Share of open Projects with a status update in the last week

  • Overdue: Open Projects past their due date

  • Delivered on time: Projects finished during the quarter by their due date

Switch between List view (progress, To Do completion, due date, members, days since last update) and Timeline view (progress and pace against each due date). You can also filter or group by whether a Project powers a Rock.

Learn more: Projects report in the Reports Complete Guide

Related articles

From the Strety blog

Want to go deeper on the why behind Projects? These posts from Strety's Blog cover strategy, best practices, and real-world examples.

Getting started with Projects

Running Projects inside EOS

Real-world examples

Questions about setting up your Projects? Reach out to our Success team at success@strety.com.

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